After months of monitoring the major marijuana cultivation areas, police made a major breakthrough late yesterday after uprooting $2M worth of marijuana from the Bemana District in the highlands of Navosa.
This is the biggest marijuana raid ever in Fiji and Police spokesperson Atunaisa Sokomuri said investigations and raids have intensified after $100,000 worth of marijuana was intercepted in Vanua Levu.
“Starting from the interception of the carrier out at Seqaqa, we saw that it’s a huge load of drugs (marijuana) after conducting several raids and searches in Nasinu, Suva and Nausori areas we found out that there’s not enough drugs to supply this kind of shipping that was going to the North and we turned our attention up to the highlands which is known for its drug cultivation and as you can recall 2 weeks ago a team of police officers from our police mobile division were up there during the weekend and they uprooted about over 1000 plants and yesterday again we saw the uprooting of about 7000 plants”.
Sokomuri said the worrying issue is that they cannot locate the marijuana farmers.
“It’s all done in secretive manner even the villagers themselves don’t know who owns the farm. It’s all secret of trade now up in the highlands where the villagers don’t know who owns the farm and all these farms have secret paths leading to the farms and whenever police conduct the raids there’s no one there at the farm all that’s will see is a small tent with cooking utensils or maybe a blanket or two and after all, most of these farms, other the information we get from the villagers is that they were uncounted them by unexpectedly, maybe on a wild pig hunting and they came across such farms that’s the usual practice now”.
Ten horses were used to take the 7,000 marijuana plants from the Navosa highlands to Keiyasi Police Station yesterday.
“Well we’re very grateful to the villagers for supplying their own horses, the used in the transportation of the drugs from the plantation to the main road where it was taken by our truck to the police station up at Keiyasi. It’s now at Keiyasi before they have been taken down to Sigatoka Police station where it will await an analyst from the Koronivia Research Station for the confirmation of the drugs”.
The average height of the 7,000 plants are 3 feet and police believe that the farmers were ready to cultivate the drugs within the next few months to supply to peddlers for the Christmas period.
